When it debuted in third place with £1.53m from 284 cinemas, Grand Budapest Hotel always looked on course to become Wes Anderson‘s biggest live-action film at UK cinemas, displacing The Royal Tenenbaums (£3.33m lifetime). A week later, with an expansion to 372 venues, the film found itself in second place in the UK box office chart. And now, in its third week of release, the Middle European caper grabs the top spot, dethroning video-game adaptation Need for Speed. With third-weekend takings of £1.27m from 458 sites, Grand Budapest Hotel has earned £6.31m in just 17 days. The film has a real shot at overtaking Anderson’s animated family flick Fantastic Mr Fox (£9.19m) to become his biggest-ever UK hit.

It’s not unprecedented for a film to rise slowly to the top of the box office chart, but more typically this occurs after a title expands nationwide from a tiny London West End platform, as occurred recently with American Hustle. We also sometimes see a film return to the top spot having been temporarily replaced by another title: that was the case with Wreck-It Ralph just over a year ago. In 2012, animations Rise of the Guardians and ParaNorman, and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel all climbed to the chart summit on their second week of play.

We have to go back to 2011 to find a full nationwide release climbing to No1 at a pace equivalent to, or slower pace than, Grand Budapest Hotel, and that was Arthur Christmas, which took four weeks to get there.

Grand Budapest Hotel’s £6.31m includes takings from its current Secret Cinema run, but it’s not known how much of the £53.50 ticket price is being included as film revenues. Not counting Secret Cinema, the film’s top site is London’s Brixton Ritzy, which has delivered a stunning £101,000 so far.